EFF

Image via: Twitter / EFF South Africa

EFF: Pravin Gordhan is deliberately sabotaging Eskom

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on Tuesday accused Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan of sabotaging Eskom.

EFF

Image via: Twitter / EFF South Africa

The EFF released a statement on Tuesday 10 December 2019, expressing their concern about the current load shedding carried out by the leadership of Eskom. 

 The EFF believes that the leadership of Gordhan and Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza are deliberately sabotaging the utility so as to build a case for the privatisation of electricity.

EFF says Gordhan is looking for Eskom to fail

The EFF said they are aware that the current administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa is working alongside a “greedy capitalist establishment”.

“It is to undermine the power generation capacity of Eskom so that they can later sell power stations to the capitalist establishment,” said the EFF. 

“This plan is part of the irrational power purchase agreements, which are milking Eskom of its much-needed resources despite the fact that these agreements and all Independent Power Producers [IPP] carry no foreseeable capacity to provide adequate and dependable electricity to all South Africans.”

EFF calls Pravin Gordhan to step down  

The Red Berets said that Gordhan should never be involved in anything to do with Eskom. 

“We demand that the entire board of Eskom and the Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan must immediately step down and should never be involved in anything to do with Eskom.”  

Experts to be appointed to solve load shedding issue 

The EFF said a team of engineers and experts, including those who have ended load shedding before, should be appointed to come up with a clear maintenance plan to be rolled out at all power stations. 

“We demand that all existing power purchase agreements entered with IPPs should be discontinued as they add no significant value to South Africa’s electricity needs. We further demand that efforts to unbundle Eskom should be stopped and the utility should be given to people who will bring maximum stability before any thought of unbundling is entertained,” the party said. 

The EFF added: “We demand that Mr Cyril Ramaphosa must develop some courage and act against incompetence and sabotage because the people who are involved in these are doing so in his name and to benefit his private funders.”

“The people of South Africa should know that the Eskom crisis is man-made and at the height of this sabotage is Pravin Gordhan and Jabu Mabuza who are hell-bent on making Eskom dysfunctional so that it can be sold to their capitalist friends.”